![]() The brothers created new labels and added jazz. They signed Howlin' Wolf, Sonny Boy Williamson, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Etta James, among many other musicians who formed the bedrock of urban blues, R&B and early rock 'n' roll. "And they could see whose eyes lit up - who started to dance." ![]() "These were white men, but they were in a world of black individuals," Cohodas says. Cohodas says that Leonard Chess had to be convinced that Muddy Waters was worthwhile. Their instincts were for business, not music. it had kind of a dark side, but as a result, it was wide open."Īnd the Chess brothers were open to opportunity. "They were Jewish there were certain arenas that were circumscribed. "They came from a family where they didn't have too much opportunity," Cohodas says. Nadine Cohodas wrote a book about Chess Records, called Spinning Blues into Gold. Their father ran a junkyard, and they rejected that line of work to start a nightclub in Chicago's so-called Black Belt in the 1940s. The businessmen behind the music had moved from Poland as children. Wright's homage to a man from the South, like his grandparents, involved him doing his own singing in the film. They were producing something out of nothing." "These folks were heroic artists in that way. "Muddy Waters dug this poetry and this music out of the dirt and fused it with his own humanity and celebrated in spite of everything that was denied him," Wright says. In the film Cadillac Records, Waters is played by actor Jeffrey Wright. Muddy Waters signed with Aristocrat Records about a year after the Chess brothers bought into the label - before they renamed it after themselves. A 33-year-old guitarist and singer named McKinley Morganfield rose from sharecropping in the Mississippi Delta to become the label's first big star. ![]() ![]() Chess Records turned pawns into kings and queens. That legacy has a huge place in American music. It's not the only one an independent release called Who Do You Love also tackles the Chess legacy. The movie Cadillac Records enlists an all-star cast - including Adrien Brody, Jeffrey Wright and Beyonce Knowles - to tell the story of Chess Records, a label synonymous with classic blues and early rock 'n' roll. Etta James at the piano, with Chess Records co-founder Phil Chess (left) and producer Ralph Bass. ![]()
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